Hold on to your hats, this is one long post!

I have been neglecting my blog for a couple of weeks now. We have just been having too much fun. Tomorrow morning we will be leaving for Houston where we are going to have even more fun. The last couple of weeks have been completely crazy. Here are just a few highlights.

1. We cut Brynn's hair! Cutting a two year old's hair is extremely difficult. All the wiggling!!! We were going to "trim" it, but the more wiggling she did the shorter it got. She was not too thrilled at first but eventually she settled down. She loves her hair. To be honest it was hard for me to part with it. I just love her hair color and was afraid of it fading, but her hair was down to her waist and it was time to let go.

2. These are the jewelry trees I like to make. I made five this year. Two were gifts and three were for us. When I was a kid we had one hanging on the wall that my mom had made years before. It was my absolute favorite Christmas decoration. So I decided to make my own.

I made this one last year. It is really big and sparklie. I love it. This one took me a long time. After I finished it I thought it would be fun to make all different shapes and sizes and display them all together.

I went down to the Goodwill and bought a bunch of odd, interesting frames. The little ones were especially fun because they went really fast.

This frame was ugly so I painted. It is very long and skinny and I thought it made for a very interesting shape. I used a lot of darker colors and jewel tones for this one.

3.This is our sorry attempt at a gingerbread house. It is not structurally sound and it is as ugly as mud but we had a blast making it. Ethan would dip his piece of candy in frosting, then lick off a little of the frosting and then put it on the house. Gross!! As we were decorating the front of the house Brynn sat behind it and ate all of the decorations off. We had a lot of fun. Lorin and Dad were the real architects. It was their artistic vision. Unfortunately the laborers were unskilled.

4. Christmas Eve was awesome. We went to the movies and saw Despereaux (thank you mom and dad Bradshaw). We ate a lot of finger food as is usual for our family on Christmas Eve. Then we reenacted the Nativity. Chaos!!! But it was fun chaos.

Here is the innkeeper telling Joseph there is "no room in the inn."

Here is the angel telling the Shepherds about the birth of the baby Jesus.

"And they were sore afraid"

"And ye shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger." Mary is so beautiful!!Joseph seems to be lying down on the job.
The wise men came from the east. In our version there are only two wise men.

Right before bedtime the kids opened up one gift. It was pajamas (as always).

4Christmas morning we opened presents. The usual craziness ensued. The kids got what they wanted and we had a great time.